Tag Archives: marketers

I’m sure all of you know all about Facebook. After all, if there is anything that the majority people know about it’s Facebook.

There are 1.5 billion active Facebook users (Holy SHIT!)

There are 4.5 billion likes generated daily

Five new profiles are created every second (Uh huh, while you read that five were created)

Average time/ user spent on Facebook is 20 minutes

Okay you get it…. We all know about Facebook! You are probably wondering what the heck this post is about. Well EdgeRank is a algorithm for Facebook that sorts posts in user’s feeds. Facebook users spend up to 40% of their time in the news feed and if that doesn’t catch your attention, as a marketer, well I just don’t know what will. As a marketer, it is extremely important to know how this algorithm works to understand how it can negatively or positively affect you.

The goal of Edgerank is to filter the News feed so that so that people see only high quality posts. But what does high quality mean? That is exactly how Facebook came up with its algorithm that helps determine what high quality content is for each individual person:

There are three important components of Facebook’s algorithm:

There is an affinity score between viewing user and item’s creator. If you send a friend regular Facebook messages and visit their profile frequently then you’ll have a higher affinity score for that user than an old acquaintance.

There is a weight given to each type of Edge. A comment has more weight than a like does.

The last factor in this equation is time. I think this is fairly obvious. The older the Edge is the less important it becomes.

You multiply all these factors for each Edge and then add the Edge scores up and you have an Object’s Edgerank. The higher that is the more likely your Object is to appear in the user’s feed. I know what you are thinking… blah… blah… blah… Let’s put this into words that we can all understand a little better.

Here are some things that get your content into user’s news feeds:

Post Regularly- Post new content on a regular basis so that your new posts will replace your old posts as they go off the news feed.

Post Photos- Users are more likely to interact with photos or videos and if you want users to interact with your posts well then you MUST give them what they want.

Encourage Engagement- Offer contests or questions in order to get users to engage with your content more

Only Post Clean Material- I would like to think that this goes without saying but….I’ll say it anyways. One bad post can ruin your reputation and so badly that it can’t be cleaned up. So avoid posting anything that could be seen as spam or against Facebook guidelines.

Build Credibility and Trust- You want users to interact with your your content and if you can show your users that your content is credible and truth worthy then you have a good foundation.

I bet you had no idea about EdgeRank. Heck I didn’t. But then again I don’t even have a Facebook so I would be the last to know. You are probably thinking how can she write about digital marketing if she doesn’t even have a Facebook? Well, let me explain this for a minute. Facebook is a simply waste of time for me. I do not need to see what other people are doing, who I rarely talk to nor who I regularly talk to. If I want to know what someone is up to I will contact them and not with Facebook. And besides, without a Facebook I can use all my extra time to learn more about digital marketing! 😉

This whole algorithm on Facebook was brought about because of spam. Facebook user’s were getting flustered with all the spam and were hiding posts. Others are convinced that Facebook brought about this new algorithm because they are trying to encourage page owners to to buy “promoted post” advertising. However, when Facebook tightened up its news feed, it lost revenues from Zynga video games, which significantly took a toll on Facebook’s payments revenue.

Not to put any names out there, but billionaire and owner of the Mavericks team, Mark Cuban, lashed out at Facebook for its algorithm, angry that now he will have to pay to ensure his fans receive his message. It’s not that I don’t like Cuban, but from the articles I read, I don’t really like him. He has made it clear that his team is going to be moving more towards Twitter, or Tumblr, or Myspace. Well that’s hilarious… Twitter… okay sure at least until they switch things up to sponsored content. But Tumblr or Myspace? Umm… Does he honestly think that is going to be better for him than Facebook with this algorithm. Dude, come on! Considering that Facebook has it’s own financial pressures along with other social media, sponsored content is the future. Sorry Mark Cuban! Out of everyone that would understand you’d think that this businessman would. Na, Mark Cuban is just another self-centered billionaire who doesn’t want to spend a penny to reach his users. Facebook has it’s users in mind with this algorithm, which is the right way to go about building a business (take notes Mark Cuban).

Now that I got that off my chest, let me talk about what I’ve read about EdgeRank being dead. Don’t confuse EdgeRank being dead, with this whole idea that Facebook has dropped this algorithm idea. It’s just that filtering the content in news feeds has become much more complicated… all the factors talked about above are still used but other factors are also used; meaning that EdgeRank, the specific algorithm talked about earlier, is indeed DEAD.

New factors are being used:

Relationship settings between Facebook users is a large factor in determining what you see in your News Feed as you can go in and label each friend as an acquaintance, or close friend.

Post types is another factor that determines what goes into your News Feed. If you always engage with photo content then you will more likely see photo content.

Now that users are able to mark posts as spam or hide posts this is also a factor in what will show up in user’s News Feed.

Story bumping also changes everything, as now time decay is less of a factor. Story bumping allows for popular posts to be seen in your News Feed even if it was posted a few hours ago.

This new system takes into account 10,000 different factors. This new system is adding more real-time signaling to help decide what goes into user’s feeds.

These days user experience is key. If you have read my post about the new Google you remember that their main focus is the user. Well Facebook joined that club (which I might add is the right club). Facebook now uses new data-analysis techniques in conjunction with their growing piles of behavior data to predict what people want to see. Facebook doesn’t care if marketers can’t keep up, after all, like I always say: “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” That was to you Mark Cuban.

Let me know what your opinion on all this is. Have you had experiences with this? Have things changed recently with your news feed?